Definition of "pugilistic" [pu•gil•is•tic]

• In the manner of a pugilist (adjective)
• Fighting with the fists (adjective)

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• "There were other critics — Borrow always had plenty of critics — who found it difficult to make his admiration for the prize-ring fit in with his denunciation in one passage of “those disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions called pugilistic combats.”"
• "Probably they liked to know that this missionary called pugilistic combats "disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions"; and they were almost as certainly, as we are to-day, delighted with the descriptions that followed, because it brought for the first time clearly before them a real prize-fighting scene, and the author, a terrible child of fourteen, looking on -- "why should I hide the truth?" says he."
• "In his "introduction" he satisfied some curiosity, but raised still more, when speaking of the English Gypsies and especially of their eminence "in those disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions called pugilistic combats.""